Mom’s perfectly plucked eyebrows arched. “Is that so? I wasn’t aware she knew her way around a library. When she was younger, we could barely convince her to read anything unless it was one of those lyric sheets that came with a CD. Normal children you can bribe with candy to do their homework. Not our Mackenzie.”
I ground my teeth to keep from popping off about just who the normal one in our family was. Cade didn’t miss a beat. “Well, it was a book on music composition I needed for my paper, so I got lucky in finding an expert. She was exactly what I needed.” He looked sideways at me, and the arm around my chair moved to my shoulder. “She still is.” This guy had the strangest affect on me. A really small part of me wanted to swoon at that cheesy declaration. Most of me wanted to vomit. Not that it mattered, since this was all pretend.
It did the trick for Mom though. She aww’ed loudly and forgot about how much she hated my interest in music.
“Paper?” she asked. “Are you in school?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m getting my master’s from Temple University.”
Jiminy fucking crickets. What happened to not overdoing it?
“Master’s degree?” Mother’s face lit up for a moment, and then dimmed. “In music?”
“No, ma’am. Acting, actually. I was writing a paper on the use of original music in theatre.”
“Acting? Isn’t that nice.” Mother’s smile stiffened. Finally, something my mother didn’t love about this guy.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s what I love. Though I’m also interested in teaching on the collegiate level.”
“A professor, how wonderful!”
I give up. In the war for my parents’ approval, I’d lost to a complete stranger.
Dad returned with two mugs of coffee, and asked, “What are we chatting about?”
Mom didn’t give either of us a chance to answer before she exclaimed, “Cade is getting his master’s degree to become a college professor. Isn’t that just fantastic?”
Mom could qualify for the Olympics in selective hearing.
“That does sound nice.”
Cade said, “Thank you, Mr. Miller.”
Dad paused in blowing on his coffee to say, “Oh please, call me Mick.”
MICK?
I had a nightmare like this once. Though, in that one I was naked. I wish I could say knowing it could be worse made things better, but it didn’t. Cade grinned easily, and relaxed back into his chair. He looked so calm, almost like he was enjoying this.
“Of course, Mick, thank you. So how was your trip?”
Dad huffed. “Terrible. Airports are the armpits of the universe. They treated your mother and I like we were terrorists, making us take those X-ray things. Probably gave us cancer. I say we get rid of them and go back to train travel. It takes longer, but it sure would be simpler.”
And so began the crazy.
Cade said, “You know, I’ve only taken a train once, but I thought it was a really enjoyable experience. I’ll have to try it again sometime.”
Trains. I kept reminding myself that it could have been worse. If my father had tried to talk trains with Mace he probably would have assumed my dad meant the perverted kind of train. That would have been disastrous.
“Enough about us. I want to hear more about you. Why has our baby girl been keeping such a nice boy a secret from us?”
Cade looked at me, and I glared at him. Now I get to talk?
He laughed, and squeezed my shoulder. His fingers stayed there, distracting me as he spoke. “I can’t speak for Max, but I think we just wanted to keep it between us for a while. Take it slow.”
And there were the magic words. I didn’t do long relationships, and I’d take things slow when I was dead. Life was too short. I think my three months with Mace was one of my longest relationships, and we were already talking about moving in together. Good thing we hadn’t done that yet.
My parents hated my tendency to move too fast. By the time they finished their cups of coffee, my parents would probably be begging to trade and have Cade as their child.
“What about hobbies?” my dad asked. Probably looking for someone to go golfing or play tennis with him. Lord knows none of my previous boyfriends had.
Cade shrugged. “School takes up most of my time. I also volunteer once a week at ASAP, it’s an after-school program for at-risk youth.”
Unfuckingbelievable. Mace didn’t know the meaning of “Hey, I don’t want your hand on my ass in public,” and this guy didn’t know the meaning of “Lay off!”
I leaned over, placed my hand on his thigh, and pinched. His thigh was strapped with muscle, and he didn’t even jump at my pinch. He put his hand over mine, and flattened my palm against his leg. I tried to pull away, but he held it there, his large, warm hand pressed mine into his hard thigh. Now it was me who needed to be pinched because I was looking at my hand on his leg, and thinking too much about the skin that lay beneath the material of his jeans. I’d forgotten why I was upset in the first place.